Many power providers are currently experiencing a shortage of electric generating capacity due to increasing consumer demand for electricity. More specifically, generating plants are often unable to meet peak power demands resulting from electricity demanded by many consumers at the same time.
In order to reduce high peak power demand, many power providers have instituted time of use metering and rates which include higher rates for energy usage during ‘on-peak’ times and lower rates for energy usage during ‘off-peak’ times. As a result, consumers are provided with an incentive to use electricity at off-peak times rather than on-peak times and/or look for other ‘local’ or ‘resident’ energy sources for supplemental generation of energy.
Presently, to take advantage of the lower cost of electricity during off-peak times, a user must manually operate appliances or other electronic devices during the off-peak times. This is undesirable because a consumer may not always be present in the home, or awake, to operate the appliance during off-peak hours. This is also undesirable because the consumer is required to manually track the current time to determine what hours are off-peak and on-peak. Therefore, there is a need to provide a system that facilitates operating appliances or other devices during off-peak hours in order to reduce consumer's electric bills and to reduce the load on generating plants during on-peak hours. Additionally, there is a need to provide a system that (in combination with the aforementioned) incorporates a method for enlisting the generation of energy at a ‘local’ source that can be used to supplement the energy being supplied by a utility, wherein a cost of energy generation at the ‘local’ source is compared against the cost of energy supplied from the utility.